Last Updated on July 9, 2025 by Angel Melanson
Picking the best Jurassic Park movie is, admittedly, a fairly easy task. Everyone agrees it’s Jurassic Park III, right? Kidding aside, Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking, record-breaking, Oscar-winning 1993 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s best-seller feels so embedded in popular culture after 32 years that picking anything other than it at the top would feel like heresy.
Not to mention that almost everything Jurassic-related that followed has in some way borrowed from its T-Rex-sized footprint, whether thematically (man vs. nature), narratively (the legacy of the Park) or technically (trying to approximate, or even just mimic, Spielberg’s virtuosity). Not since Halloween has a movie supplied filmmakers with so much inspiration for stories while still wildly overshadowing every subsequent attempt.
Even so, ranking the films takes a bit more work than lining up the sequels behind Spielberg’s original on the runway: there’s the original trilogy, the Jurassic World trilogy, and then the new film Jurassic World Rebirth, which one presumes is designed to kick off a third trilogy, or at least a few more follow-ups. As that latest chapter arrives in theaters, FANGORIA attempts to take on this task as dispassionately as possible — or, at least, without allowing our Gen-X moviegoer bona fides to weigh too heavily upon the scales.
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Jurassic World (2015)
In one of the most egregious examples ever of an indie filmmaker levelling up — prematurely — to become a studio craftsman, Colin Trevorrow was reportedly hand-picked by none other than Steven Spielberg himself to step into the director’s chair for this reboot of the billion-dollar franchise after it lay dormant for more than a decade.
Its offenses to the series start early with the cynical (and based just on the intervening sequels, categorically unfounded) premise that in the real world, dinosaurs would become boring. Bad creative decisions continue to occur at alarmingly regular intervals as the filmmakers create violent, cartoonishly oversized scenarios while anemic human characters make baffling or stupid decisions that exacerbate the inevitable implosion of the wildlife resort/ theme park that rose from the ashes of the film’s original Jurassic Park.
For example, a dinosaur is designed that’s so smart it can claw out its tracking device and conceal its heat signature; two visiting kids inconsistently distracted by their parents’ impending divorce seldom seem even remotely terrified by the prospect of being eaten by said dinosaur; and a security consultant secretly decides to steal Velociraptor DNA to sell for military purposes, after watching Velociraptors defy their human training and kill the soldiers they’re supposed to be working with.
(There’s also the matter of Claire’s impractical footwear and the feeding of her poor assistant to a Mosasaurus.) Bryce Dallas Howard and a then on-the-come-up Chris Pratt make for serviceable (if irritatingly contentious) leads, but overall the film exudes the stench of being rushed to the screen while its screenplay (and director) was still severely undercooked, which is why a decade later, among all of the films, it still falls the flattest as entertainment.
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
The prospect of getting the band (meaning original cast members Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum) back together for one final adventure sweetened the lackluster appeal of another dinosaur movie directed by Trevorrow, but in retrospect you have to wonder how much the decision was driven by the amount of cultural capital Chris Pratt seemed to have lost as a leading man between 2015 and 2022.
After three films trying to leverage his rugged, stubborn knowledge about dinosaurs as charm, Owen remains too far on the obnoxious side of his skill set, although what you realize in this film is that he really only has one trick: holding his hand out and saying, “hey girl” to a crouching Velociraptor.
It does not help that his and Claire’s aim is to rescue a baby dinosaur and a little girl whose mysterious origin story was not interesting in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, nor that the franchise yet again swapped out one evil corporation for an even bigger, more evil one, or that the trail to exposing it lies not with, say, exploring the dinosaur population now roaming the earth but… (checks notes) investigating giant swarms of destructive locusts.
As the franchise continues to wrestle (uninterestingly) with whether pioneer geneticist Wu is a joyful capitalist or a conscience-stricken scientist, you realize more acutely than ever that every conflict in all three Jurassic World films is basically driven by somebody being too smug or arrogant to be careful about dinosaurs, while actually subscribing to the notion that the world has become complacent about them — and amplifying it with repetitive, unimaginative portrayals of these wondrous beasts
Jurassic Park III (2001)
At 92 minutes, Joe Johnston’s follow-up to Spielberg’s installments is the shortest Jurassic film by a considerable margin. What it delivers in efficiency and intensity, it lacks in believable storytelling, as Alan Grant gets fooled into visiting Isla Sorna by two desperate parents whose child reportedly landed on the dinosaur haven. Even by then-nascent internet standards, the level of investigation Grant makes into the couple—or they in him, believing he went to the Park’s Site B—is pretty shameful, and their son Eric’s familiarity with all the paleontologists’ books seems highly unlikely at best.
Even so, Johnston casts a murderer’s row of character actors, including Michael Jeter, John Diehl, and Bruce A. Young, as the mercenaries hired to transport the group to the island. A crash landing exacerbated by the arrival of a Spinosaurus offers a tremendously entertaining set piece. A dream sequence featuring a talking Velociraptor remains one of the oddest (and most meme-able) moments in franchise history.
And even in a naked deus ex machina of a cameo, Laura Dern’s appearance as Ellie Sattler saves the movie in more ways than one. Lean and mean, Jurassic Park III can’t help but feel comparatively slight, but at least it delivers what audiences came to see in a film about dinosaurs terrorizing people.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
This film’s director-for-hire, J. A. Bayona, is a more seasoned and skillful filmmaker than Colin Trevorrow, so his chapter was bound to mark an improvement after Trevorrow shifted “just” to co-screenwriting. But this film’s handful of poetic moments — such as the sight of a Brachiosaurus swallowed by a cloud of smoke from an erupting volcano — are too few and far between, and they’re too frequently overshadowed by human characters who are either stupid or actively evil.
Viewers learn this about them because they either never, ever stop talking in reams of exposition, or display behavior like, say, ripping teeth out of dead dinosaurs' mouths like a psychotic veteran in a 1980s Vietnam War film stealing Viet Cong ears like they’re trophies.
As in Jurassic World, the corporate powers that be enlist Dr. Wu to design a genetically-enhanced dinosaur, this time the Indoraptor, a choice he (and the movie itself) once again rationalizes away with a handwave. Instead, it pretends to examine the morality (much less practicality) of bio-engineered beings by introducing Maisie, the granddaughter of John Hammond’s former partner Ben Lockwood (James Cromwell in a role so nakedly paycheck-collecting that it might as well have been sitting next to him in the bed where his character spends most of his time).
Her back story is a mystery that’s not interesting enough to sustain the amount of screen time devoted to it, though the payoff is a moderately thrilling “haunted house”-ish sequence, though it arrives too late. But as a prelude to unleashing dinosaurs into the modern, developed world, to borrow a phrase, Fallen Kingdom seems so preoccupied with whether or not it could achieve that payoff that it never bothers to consider whether or not it should — or maybe just do it in a smart way.
Jurassic Park Rebirth (2025)
Gareth Edwards is a gifted purveyor of large-scale thrills, with the likes of Godzilla and Rogue One under his belt. Working slightly more transparently as a director for hire (brought into the production just over a year before its release date), Edwards leans heavily on boilerplate adventures, especially the original Jurassic Park and Spielberg’s Jaws, for inspiration — and the results are satisfyingly familiar.
Smartly, the story discards all of the corporate mythology (not to mention most of the flight-of-fancy scientific tinkering) that the previous World films emphasized so heavily and instead focuses on an expedition deep into dinosaur territory with a handful of black-ops experts, a dreamy-eyed paleontologist, and, of course a wealthy, avaricious benefactor.
Alongside Mahershala Ali, Scarlett Johansson looks comfortably in charge (of the movie and the mission), while Jonathan Bailey manages to create a character that’s both a bookworm and appealingly able-bodied. Save for another genetic abnormality at the film’s climax, the dinosaurs are all gratifyingly “real,” complementing set pieces that feel thrilling.
Opinions may vary on whether (comparatively) quietly running the bases is less desirable than the swings the previous three films made for the fences (overshooting logic, believability or just basic enjoyment, but more important than where he seems to be aiming, Edwards scores an entertaining hit with this film that catapults it into the series’ top ranks.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Steven Spielberg has made no secret that he phoned in this follow-up to the 1993 original film, but the question 28 years later, especially in the context of what followed, is: would we really be able to tell if he hadn’t admitted it? Revisiting the film now, it feels like watching LeBron James or Steph Curry playing any regular-league basketball game — even when they’re not trying very hard, they’re outplaying just about everyone on the court.
Returning screenwriter David Koepp’s razor-sharp humor really elevates Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm from comic relief to reluctant hero, while Spielberg assembles a terrific supporting cast (including Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Pete Postlewaite and Richard Schiff) that occupies intriguingly different positions with regard to the fate, and immediate treatment, of these untamed beasts.
Even without all of that, Spielberg mounts one dynamite sequence after another: the integration of practical and computer-generated effects is more seamless than ever, and scenes like the trailer assault (by two T-Rexes, no less) and the Velociraptor ambush just feel airtight in their pacing and execution.
Not to mention, Spielberg does in this film what no one has since in the series: created a really substantial sequence on the mainland involving dinosaurs. The San Diego sequence, where a Tyrannosaur interacts with suburbia, is what moviegoers had been waiting for, and it wraps the film with a spectacular promise that, quite frankly, no one’s yet lived up to.
Jurassic Park (1993)
What is there to say about this film, which has spawned six sequels, an animated series, video games, and grossed more than $1 billion? To keep it out of the ranks of Steven Spielberg’s very best films speaks more to the competition in terms of quality, which is absolutely top shelf.
The changes and adjustments to the novel are long forgotten, thanks to Koepp’s meaty but measured screenplay, which unveils the beasts in such careful doses that you get seduced by their majesty before scaring the living hell out of you. The film’s visual effects were groundbreaking (winning three Oscars) at the time, but what’s more notable is how effectively they work in concert with more traditional techniques, giving the dinosaurs a palpable physicality that makes them even more believable.
That said, the film is not perfect; as unbelievably good as the ensuing scene is, I defy any person on this earth to explain to me the geography of the T-Rex paddock. But the characterizations of the three scientists have reverberated through the rest of the franchise for decades, and there are so many memorable moments, amplified by performances from a spectacular cast, that it deservedly occupies a permanent place in our collective cinematic memories.
Spielberg had already twice defined blockbuster filmmaking prior to 1993, but since Jurassic Park, everyone in the industry truly has been chasing his tail, whether a dinosaur was involved or not.
Hungry for more? You can read tons of original Jurassic Park coverage in our July 1993 issue (FANGORIA #124). Now available cover to cover for FREE in our archives.
